


Flying

by miss_murder



Category: Cirque du Soleil - Fandom, Original Work
Genre: Acrobatics, F/M, Romance, stage fright
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-19
Updated: 2014-12-19
Packaged: 2018-03-02 07:01:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,084
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2803757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miss_murder/pseuds/miss_murder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Original work. Right before her debut, Aleece is afraid she won't do well. Her costar, Kendal, tries to comfort and encourage her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Flying

There had always been something captivating about the Cirque du Soleil. Not only the dazzling costumes and fantastic music, but the acrobats themselves. Using their bodies to create stories, seeming to fly through the air on invisible wings. They are looked upon by hundreds of awestruck audience members every night, watched as if they’re the most beautiful creatures to grace the earth with the feather-light tread of their footsteps.

So never, in a million years, did I think I would become one of them.

————-

I’d joined the Cirque three months earlier. After going through a vicious six-month training camp with nineteen other girls and twenty boys. I was one of only four chosen as new recruits.

Honestly, I went through a bit of shock when my name was called - I was thin and agile, which was good, but I was the tallest of the entire group of forty, and my balance and flexibility needed work. I’d been known to trip over myself and run into chairs, tables, door frames, everything. The others laughed at me. They called me a “clumsy giraffe”.

_Look at me now, jerks. Ha._

Now, after living and breathing training and practice, I would make my debut. In a brand new show, I would be doing most of my performing with aerial silks, like the Aerialist in _Worlds Away_ , which I had watched extensively during training, studying his movements and the way he held himself in the air. My costume was all sheets of white silk and trails of gossamer that floated around me like a cloud.

I was playing the main character’s dead lover in the show, the one he pines after during his descent into madness. And in the finale, the man and his love are reunited. Sad, yes, but also darkly beautiful.

Backstage, however, was a different story. Nerves had taken over my body, and had just recently emptied the contents of my stomach into the toilet in my dressing room bathroom. Bad move. One should never perform on an empty stomach, nor a full one. Always eat a little. But me, I could hardly move; wracked with fear and anxiety, I felt frozen to the icy tile floor.

An hour before showtime, my costar, Kendal, knocked on my door. “Aleece, are you almost ready?” When I didn’t answer, he came in anyway.

He found me slumped on the bathroom floor, surrounded by an acidic smell and smeared makeup where my tears had fallen down my face.

Things were silent.

He flushed the toilet and gave me some mouthwash, then used a tissue to try and smudge my makeup into place. He smoothed down my hair and brought me to my feet, letting me sit on a crushed velvet settée in the main area. Kendal handed me a glass of water and a small bowl of salad from the food table set up backstage. I half-heartedly ate, not tasting the greens as I chewed.

Finally, I broke the silence. “I can’t do this…” I croaked.

"Yes, you can."

I started to cry again. “No, I can’t! It’s going to be a disaster!”

Kendal shushed me and sat beside me, pressing a tissue to my eyes so I wouldn’t smear my makeup further. “You can, Aleece. I’ve watched you practice, you know every move and how to do them perfectly. You’re a natural up there.” 

"But the finale!" I sobbed. "I still don’t know if I can do it right, not with all those people watching me." 

"You can, I know you can! We’ve gone through it a million times. And I promise," he muttered as he pressed a kiss to my forehead, "I won’t let you fall. Not ever." 

Outside, one of the stage managers called thirty minutes until curtain. Kendal took my hands and pulled me to my feet and towards the door. “Come on, let’s get you to Joleen, she’ll fix your makeup all nice and pretty.”

————-

My stomach lurched every time I took that first jump. 

There was a platform high above the stage where I always made my entrances, floating into the light like the specter I portrayed. I tried not to focus on the fact that I was between twenty-five and thirty feet in the air with no safety harness if I made one wrong move.  Instead, I took a deep breath, cleared my mind, and became weightless. I knew these silks, and I maneuvered with them with the grace of a bird. 

I finally knew that feeling - being not human, but aerialist; weightless, defying death with beauty. Being looked upon with awe by hundreds of people as if I were an intergalactic treasure. That only made me try harder to do my best. 

Then came the finale with Kendal. I shook with nerves in the wings, trying to steady myself. I couldn’t afford to make a mistake now. I quickly ran through every minute of rehearsals we’d gone through, dissecting each of my moves in my head at hyper speed.

My stand-alone tricks went well, and the ones that we did separately. But then came the part I feared - I had to drop from my silk, fall about ten feet, then trust Kendal to catch me. In rehearsals, we had a crash pad below us. But I never fell. 

Though now that it wasn’t there, I worried. 

Kendal entered on his own silk. 

_Relax. Breathe. Focus,_ I repeated to myself, spinning higher and higher.

I let go. 

The air rushed out of my lungs with the crowd’s collecti ve gasp. 

My heart skipped two beats. 

I closed my eyes.

Right on cue, yet suddenly, a strong arm caught me around the waist, carrying me back around to my own silks. My heart beat like a hummingbird’s wings until we reached the next set of moves, one of which involved me hanging twenty-five feet up, supported only my hands clasped tightly behind Kendal’s neck. 

"Look at me. Don’t look down, look at me," Kendal muttered in my ear.

I brought my wide, terrified gaze up to meet his tender one, soft and the warmest blue like a cloudless summer day. He smiled gently, continuing with the rest of the stunts until we stood on the ground again, mere seconds before the lights dimmed, signalling the end of the show.

But I couldn’t take my eyes off Kendal’s.

"I told you I wouldn’t let you fall," he whispered. His lips pressed against mine in the same second that we were thrust into darkness.


End file.
